In a promotional piece from PW, Book Expo now confirms what they would not make official for us a week ago (though it was between the lines if you read carefully): With convention attendance dwindling steadily over the past five years and then dropping precipitously for the 2016 Chicago event, the new strategy will officially “limit” non-exhibitor attendees to 6,000 people. As we reported recently, Chicago attendees numbered 6,314 people, or right around the new limit, down from 9,634 in 2015, and 11,374 in 2012. Media are counted separately. As noted on the show website, the exhibit floor will once again open for two […]
Barnes & Noble Settles Boire’s Severance
Barnes & Noble has finalized a settlement agreement with former ceo Ronald Boire, fired after just over a year with the company. The retailer will pay Boire $4,825,600, and he will forfeit all equity awards. Boire and the company “agreed to release claims against each other in connection with Mr. Boire’s termination of employment.” As part of the agreement, BN also agreed to state in an 8-K SEC form the following language: “The Company regrets that things did not work out for the longer term between Mr. Boire and the Company. The Company appreciates Mr. Boire’s efforts on behalf of the Company, […]
People: Aitken Dies
Clare Alexander of Aitken Alexander announced the death of her business partner, literary agent Gillon Aitken “after a period of ill health.” She writes: “A towering figure in so many of our lives, publishing has lost a great agent from a brilliant generation. He was a wise counsel, a true intellectual and an irreplaceable friend.” She includes testimonials from a number of clients, including Sebastian Faulks: “Gillon was one of my closest friends. He was was one of my closest friends. He was also my literary agent for 30 years…. As an agent, he was creative, mischievous and drove a hard bargain; but he […]
PW’s Best Books of the Year
Following Indigo’s lead earlier this week, PW has announced their picks for the 10 best books of 2016: Barkskins, Annie Proulx (Scribner) What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus) Ninety-Nine Stories of God, Joy Williams (Tin House) The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) The Vegetarian, Han Kang, trans. fby Deborah Smith (Hogarth) Blood in the Water, Heather Ann Thompson (Pantheon) Evicted, Matthew Desmond (Crown) Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, Frances Wilson (Farrar, Straus) A Kingdom of Their Own, Joshua Partlow (Knopf) Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, Svetlana Alexievich, trans. by Bela Shayevich (Random House)
Amazon’s Stock Falls on Slimmer Than Expected Profits; Media Sales Now Even with Apple
Amazon and Google both reported third quarter sales after the close of the market on Thursday. Amazon was expected to exceed analysts’ expectations (yes, that’s as crazy as it sounds) but they only fulfilled that halfway: Indeed sales of $32.7 billion were about $130 million ahead of those estimates, rising 29 percent overall, but profits returned to disappointing, with net income of $252 million or 52 cents a share — down from a quarter ago, and down from analysts’ target of 85 cents a share. Those profits were additionally disappointing when you consider that the company’s profit engine — the AWS web services […]
Jolly Fish Press Claims Sale Is Pending to “Established Publisher”
Ten days ago Jolly Fish Press surprised authors and employees in announcing online that they would close at the end of October “unless another option will present itself” for lack of financing. (That announcement was followed by an apology to authors for announcing online before emailing them, along with an insistence that they “were not legally allowed to pre-release the news to anyone.”) Now in a post titled “Moving Forward,” they have announced “we have reached an agreement in principle to sell Jolly Fish Press to an established publisher. We will announce all the details once the deal is finalized […]